Everybody Dies
by elfmaiden4legs
Summary: ****Spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen S8! I hope this DOESN'T happen but for the purposes of this story Wilson dies of his cancer! House drops a massive bombshell on the day of Wilson's fulneral and Dominika is left to pick up the pieces!


**Everybody Dies**

Dominika placed a gentle hand upon her husband's shoulder, bringing him out of his gentle contemplation, and as their eyes met she forced a smile – encouraging him to find the strength from within himself to face the day ahead.

"It's time to go." She explained, flattening the creases from his suite and straightening his ashen tie before wiping the silent tears from his pale cheek and pecking him delicately upon his cold forehead. As she pulled away from him she took him gently by the hand, but House made no attempt to move.

"I… I can't do this Dominika…" He faltered with a shake of his head, voice shaking slightly as his whole body shivered beneath her touch. She squeezed his hand gently beneath her own small palm, but House simply slipped his hand away from hers and turned away. "I… I'm not ready to say goodbye…" He explained.

"Few of us ever are when the time comes." She sighed gently. "But nothing lasts forever. Everybody dies. We all have to learn to say goodbye to the ones we love."

"Dominika… there's something I haven't told you…" House sniffed, refusing to look his young wife in the face as he spoke the words which had plagued and haunted him for the past few weeks – words which he'd so desperately wanted to tell Wilson in the days before the dreaded 'C' word had raised its ugly head, and after which even he had realised he could never place such a burden upon a dying man.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the letters." He apologised. "I'm sorry if I hurt you. I was afraid that you would leave me… and… and I didn't want to be alone."

"It doesn't matter." She shook her head with a meek smile. "What you did was wrong, but…"

"I'm dying…" House whispered. It was a confession, delivered on a barely audible breath, but a bombshell big enough to stop Dominica dead in her tracks, palm outstretched towards her husband's cheek. At the same time House felt as though the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders.

"What?" She asked.

House sighed.

"My liver's shot." He explained softly. "I've known a few weeks… my team, they suspected something was wrong, but I wasn't ready to face the truth. I preferred to do what I always do, bury my head in the sand… but the years of popping vicodin like sugar pills have finally caught up with me… it seems my liver couldn't take anymore…"

"Are… are you sure?" Dominica asked.

House nodded.

"But… is there nothing they can do?" She frowned. "Surely? You're a doctor!"

"Even if there was I'm not even sure I have the strength to carry on anymore." House shook his head, before turning to look at her, noticing the tears now glistening in his young wife's eyes – she did care after all. "Not after this. I'm not sure I want to live another twenty years without Jimmy. I wasn't a particularly good friend to him when he was alive, I was never there for him when he needed me… but it's only now that he's gone that I'm beginning to realise that he was probably the best darn friend I could ever have hoped to have…

But that's all irrelevant now anyway, because there's nothing anyone can do, the damage is too extensive… I'm going to die…"

"How long?" Dominika asked.

House shrugged non-comitantly, and the young woman could tell that her husband had already lost his fight for life.

"A few months…" He explained. "Maybe slightly less. The doctor's suggested that coming off the vicodin might give me a little longer, but not a lot, and I don't want to spend my last few months in pain…"

"Then, I'll stay…" She whispered.

"No!" House protested vehemently, taking her aback slightly. "I didn't tell you because I wanted you to pity me! Don't you see, I don't deserve love, I don't deserve your sympathy… I told you because for whatever silly, stupid, insignificant reason we got married you're my wife, and you have the right to know!"

"I'm not doing this out of pity." She exclaimed. "If you don't want me to stay here, then you can come back to the Ukraine with me."

"But why?" House asked.

"Wilson wouldn't want you to be alone." She replied simply with a smile, and House smiled with this mention of his best friend's name – she was certainly right on that score.

"If he could be here now he'd be doing everything he could to make sure he was with you every step of the way… to make sure you weren't in any pain… I wouldn't be much of a wife if I left my husband to fend for himself in his time of most need now would I?" She asked.

"I'm… so scared…" House confessed, as he finally broke down and cried. The façade which he'd spent half a lifetime working to build up finally now beginning to crack.

"I know Greg." Dominika nodded, as she scooped her sobbing husband up into her own slender arms, crying silent tears alongside a man who'd finally broken under the sheer strain that the world had placed upon his shoulders, and hugging the distraught man tightly to her. "But I promise you, I won't leave you. I'm not going anywhere… it's what Wilson would have wanted. Everything's going to be alright!"


End file.
